Best Sautéed Mushrooms

Sautéed Mushrooms make a quick side dish or topping for your favorite protein. Here are our tips for that perfect buttery and earthy flavor.

Best of all, it only takes 5 ingredients and 15 minutes to bring together the best sautéed mushrooms.

How should you slice the mushrooms?

It depends on how many people you are looking to serve. About 16 ounces of pre-sliced mushrooms will fit in a 12-inch skillet and lay almost flat in the skillet, allowing them to brown nicely.

If you get whole mushrooms and are only feeding two people, you can slice them thinner to take up the same amount of space in the skillet.

If you’re making more than 16 ounces of mushrooms, you may not want to slice them as thin to avoid taking up as much room in the pan. You can even leave them whole or just halve them. Just know they will take longer to cook this way.

How do you avoid watery mushrooms?

The first step to avoid your mushrooms turning watery is in how you wash them. Use a damp paper towel to brush off the dirt rather than submerging them in water. Mushrooms are spongy so they’ll soak up the water they sit in.

Next, you also want to be able to fit the correct amount of mushrooms in a pan for them to lay as flat as possible in the skillet. This helps them brown rather than end up watery.

Crowding a pan with too many mushrooms can actually steam the mushrooms rather than sauté them. This is due to the amount of water that the mushrooms release while they’re cooking.

When should you add salt to the mushrooms?

Add salt to the mushrooms right at the end of cooking. If you add salt to the mushrooms too early in the cooking process, it will draw more moisture out of the mushrooms, which also makes it harder to brown them.

What temperature should you use to cook them?

In order to brown the mushrooms, you want to use really high heat. The super hot fat helps heat and brown the mushrooms more quickly.

Should you use oil, butter, or both?

Our secret to perfectly sautéed mushrooms is using a combination of fats. Because you’re cooking over high heat you need to use a cooking oil with a high smoke point. The hot oil will help cook the mushrooms quickly and create the golden brown edges.

Once the mushrooms are browned on both sides, you’ll add butter to the skillet to add that buttery flavor sautéed mushrooms should have. Because butter has a lower smoke point you don’t want to cook them in just butter. The oil helps keep the butter from burning too quickly.

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